Superman Has Super Obligations

[HaemishM]

Similarly, the bottle city of Kandor always struck me as an interesting metaphor.  Clark 'ruled' over that in the same way he rules over Earth.  He wants to 'help' but is ultimately powerless to affect.  The problem is people on Earth and, with the bottle, he literally cannot change the problem;  these people are in a fucking bottle Clark.

Interesing you bring that up. They have had a good writer, Geoff Johns, on the Action Comics for about a year  or a bit longer. There was a story arc where Braniac comes back and he's more like a Galactus/Collector type of character than he's ever been. Superman finds the bottle city of Kandor, only now the city is regrown to normal size on Earth. And suddenly, 100,000 or so Kryptonians are living on Earth (the series is running across multiple books, Action, Superman and Supergirl). It's a really good story, a good examination of what would happen if not all the Kryptonians were Willy Whitebreads. Luthor and Lois's father (a general) send Doomsday after Superman and the combined might of about 30 or so Kandorian Krpytonians kill Doomsday pretty easily. It's a good story. I think it just ended (I'm a few months behind) so should be collected soon.

[Velorath]

I disagree with that.  But I'm fairly drunk.  Like, very drunk.  I may explain later.

I'm interested in hearing your explaination.

I don't think it's really fair to say 'That's the common holes the writers fall into'.  Sure, lazy writers will take the green rock way out and brilliant writers will come up with moral and intellectual challenges for the indestructible Man of Steel.  You may even enjoy them.

But for me, they're actually just as much of a fucking cop out as the Green rock.  They're totally artificial challenges.  A mutant on his chest that's giving him a MIND FUCK is just as much of a cop out as 'Oh Noes' Another Green Rock'.  It's just taking the percieved weakness of that indestructible character and fucking with him.

I wouldn't say they're artificial challenges.  In most cases they're pretty logical.  The artificial challenges are the villains who decide they're going to try to physically beat the guy to death even though they (and the readers) should know at this point it isn't going to work.  There's a reason two of Superman's biggest villains are Luthor and Brainiac.  These are guys who (when written well) use their intelligence and say "ok, brute force ain't gonna work, what are some of our other options here".  It's no different than how Batman comes up with ways to beat people way out of his league.

[UnSub]

To follow on from Velorath - there are other ways to 'beat' Superman than punch his head in. Unfortunately a lot of comics are two fights and a chase scene, so they tend not to play out so well / be popular among the readers.

Both Superman and Batman are power fantasies, but Superman is based on hope while Batman is based on fear. It's a lot easier for writers to use the fear angle (popular with the demographic) than the hope one (because said demographic are also very cynical).

[Fordel]

I've always had a similar view on Batman/Superman.

Superman represents Justice. A physical manifestation of what "should be". Preventing the crime before it happens, stopping the disaster, saving the burning orphan etc.

Batman represents Vengeance. Batman can't prevent every crime or disaster. He can't save every burning orphan, but he can make sure the bastard who lit the place on fire gets what is coming to him.


Batman is that feeling, when you see the news story about the pedophile or rapist or what have you and go "I'd like to get my hands on that bastard, show him what for!" Batman actually does get his hands on that bastard, and deals with him.

Superman is the other feeling, why was this even allowed to happen? Can't we protect people? Superman can, and does.

[Ironwood]

Which comes down to parents.

[NowhereMan]

Or lack thereof

[Ironwood]

Actually, I have another huuuuge big post inside me about abandonment/nurturing as the key issue (since it doesn't actually matter the state of Waynes parents, merely the absence), but I've done my big post for the year.

Back to snarky one liners for me.

You cunts.

[LK]

I'm getting a huge Pitsy ala Punisher: MAX vibe from Ironwood.

[Ironwood]

I don't know what that means.

[Hindenburg]

It means that you owe it to yourself to pick up the issues of Punisher: MAX that Garth Ennis wrote.

[gryeyes]

Needs to pick up the entire Max: Punisher series. One of the best comics in print.

[LK]

I'm glad I have at least one thing I can claim as being right about! (The quality of Punisher: MAX vs. all other comics) 

[WindupAtheist]

Point by point.

Indestructibility

Doomsday. Or if you prefer, the guy in Ironwood's avatar and his two superpowered minions. It's not like Superman never fights anyone who's a physical threat to him. This isn't the thirties and he's not rounding up helpless bankrobbers every time out.

Moral absolutism

Yeah and the whole "situation where being powerful isn't enough" thing hasn't been done either, right? In the Dini series the author blows off, among other places. It's like this guy never saw anything with Superman in it, and is just going off of things he's heard.

Truth, justice, and the Kryptonian way

Blah blah blah, rambling gibberish about how Superman stands for white patriarchy fascism, or what the fuck ever. I wish all this shit were real, so the author's children could bleed to death at the bottom of a canyon while Superman sits there not helping because helping would turn human beings into sheep and yadda yadda yadda.

Powers given < powers earned

Yeah, because no one else in a comic book ever suddenly found themselves with powers. Other than Batman doing a lot of situps, who really has "earned" their powers, anyway?

Batman > Superman

Fuck Batman already.

This article was shit.

[Arnold]

Superman irl would be bogged down in partisan politics in roughly three seconds.  Stop the missiles raining down on Gaza or not? Destroy every poppy field in Afghanistan (condemning farmers to starvation) or not (contributing to drug deaths worldwide)?  Fly over countries where 70% of people are malnourished, a brutal dictator is in charge, and kill him (possibly setting off even WORSE chaos) or not?  Submit completely to the orders of the U.S. government and be used as a tool of their policy, or be condemned as a traitor and criminal the moment you do something to save people that the current president doesn't want you to do? 

Anyone with those powers who wasn't Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and MLK combined x100 would find themselves saying "shit, I should just run this all and make everyone behave, people are starving and oppressed and even the democracies are weak and stupid" in under a year.  The fact that Superman hasn't done that is his best quality by far. 

Or what happens when all Kent's friends and family die off?  Does he make new ones? 

Is he in a hospital at Lois' deathbed one minute, then leaving his suit and tie on the floor the minute she, his last surviving link to humanity dies, while flying out the window thinking, "Fuck it"?  Then going full-on Kryptonian God, Kal-El, who is ultimately fated to face down Batman, who is now fully robotic (to cheat death and keep on doing the thing he is possessed to do), in a huge smackdown, a la "The Dark Knight Returns".

[lamaros]

I find it interesting that Superman is at such a remove from humanity for some people. Taking just a small point, so as to not make this post too long:

These people are human.  They are flawed.  They are, without doubt, complete and utter assholes.

The interesting dilemma to me, and one that is difficult to address in the medium, is that Superman wants to be human (or, more specifically, back on his own planet living a normal life) but that he cannot. You can take the reading that Clark Kent is how superman views human beings, or you can take the view that it is Superman trying to run away from circumstances he has been born into but wants to escape.

You have a figure who can seemingly do anything he wants but at the same time cannot. For no goal is achievable if he it to be true to himself: to use his power constantly to set the world to rights would actually result in an authoritarian destruction of the world - he cannot change the world without changing the world - while at the same time refusing to act in any way is an abandonment of the ideal that those who have the power to address problems they see should do something about it. He's constantly caught between these two positions and as such doomed (as batman is doomed) to never really being able to change the situation.

A believes in y.
A doesn't believe in x.
A can stop x.
If A stops x they will change y to x.

The difference is that Batman's dilemma requires him to be constantly and wholeheartedly involved in the kind of action that makes for readable engaging stories, while Superman's is the kind that becomes better realised in a novel. Superman sitting about his office contemplating how he should live his life isn't really going to hook people in, and the only escape from this is stuff that forces him out of this dilemma by targeting those close to him, or with glowing rocks. In which case Superman's position changes to a more conventional one and doesn't actually engage with his character in any novel way.

Superman's position is still something people can relate to, and you can have interesting stories about this dilemma (Ironwood has given two of them). It's just harder to do so in the medium.

[Lantyssa]

Which is why he holds little interest as a comic book character to me.

[glennshin]

*NECRO*

Having a nearly omnipotent character is not why Supes sucks balls. It still all boils down to the writers.
Anyone ever read the Miracle Man comics by Alan Moore?  That hero had all the invulnerabilities of Supes, (and a shitton more complexity) but Moore dealt with it perfectly. He's an amazing fucking writer.
If you have these amazing godlike powers, your obstacles need to be on a god like scale.  In the end Miracle Man completely changes society as we know it. That is how you deal with ultimate power.

I can't remember the last time Superman ever tried actually changing the world. Hell, if he wanted only to be left alone, he could have done like Magneto and create a city/society on an asteroid or some remote part of earth. Or turn emo and kill himself, maybe fly to a star or black hole. That's still possible right?

[LK]

Changing the world requires changing the status quo, and that's very bad in how comics are written today.

[gryeyes]

They explore the "what ifs" of superman with the zillion other earths alternate dimensions whatever. What happens if he was a black guy. What happens if he was a nazi,russian etc. I tend to avoid DC comics but tried to start back up with the Countdown to whatever the fuck 12 that made absolutely no fucking sense in relation to the actual event. Someone should be stabbed in the balls for releasing that.

[HaemishM]

52 was good. Countdown was utter drek. Final Crisis was well-intentioned but utterly incomprehensible.

[Fabricated]

Batman is the ultimate right-wing fascist villain. Superman is the pretty public face of right-wing authoritarianism, with the ability to spy on anyone and stop a crime before it happens. Although, if you go back to Superman's Siegel & Schuster roots, he's a lot more left-wing than he is these days, taking on coruption capitalists and the Nazis as much as crooks.

Getting in really late with this since i just read 64 issues of Punisher (MAX) and Born; I don't know how right-wing Frank Castle really is considering he literally has no use for the law. He has a code about not killing innocent people or cops/soldiers but he'll certainly beat the living shit out of them if it comes down to it (he gives a mercy-killing to a critically injured civvy at one point). Supes and Batman are pretty much declared legal in their worlds outside of the odd plot arc, whereas the police don't fuck with the Punisher due to a combination of liking what he does and being fucking terrified of him.

Also good god does the writing really fall apart later on in the Punisher Max stuff.

[Triforcer]

Batman is the ultimate right-wing fascist villain. Superman is the pretty public face of right-wing authoritarianism, with the ability to spy on anyone and stop a crime before it happens. Although, if you go back to Superman's Siegel & Schuster roots, he's a lot more left-wing than he is these days, taking on coruption capitalists and the Nazis as much as crooks.

Getting in really late with this since i just read 64 issues of Punisher (MAX) and Born; I don't know how right-wing Frank Castle really is considering he literally has no use for the law. He has a code about not killing innocent people or cops/soldiers but he'll certainly beat the living shit out of them if it comes down to it (he gives a mercy-killing to a critically injured civvy at one point). Supes and Batman are pretty much declared legal in their worlds outside of the odd plot arc, whereas the police don't fuck with the Punisher due to a combination of liking what he does and being fucking terrified of him.

Also good god does the writing really fall apart later on in the Punisher Max stuff.

I've always wondered how any of the criminals Batman catches are ever convicted.  He won't come testify in court, so where is the evidence?  And why don't defense attorneys file motions to get Batman-brought evidence and cases thrown out? 

Its been awhile since I took constitutional law, but I "think" evidence brought by other civilians to the police (i.e., no warrant) is ok to use if the person wasn't actually operating, either officially or unofficially, on behalf of the police.  But the Gotham PD has a damn bat-signal on the roof. 

[Lantyssa]

Everyone Batman catches is declared insane before they reach a point to enter evidence.

[Triforcer]

Heh, I'd forgotten about that.  Batman's world is at once much, much more conservative than ours and also much, much more liberal. 

[Khaldun]

Right. Because everyone gets declared insane and no one ever gets executed. There was one apparently "in-canon" story in which the Joker was due to be executed and Batman finds out it's for the one crime he didn't commit, so he finds the evidence that exonerates the Joker. I was thinking, so wait: they *do* have the death penalty on DC Earth? And no super-criminal EVER has EVER been given the death penalty for crimes, just that one time? It isn't just the justice system on DC Earth: American voters in that world are basically not human beings as we know them on our planet. They might look like it, but they're so over-the-top liberal in one respect that they never, ever vote for or demand an expansion of the death penalty and they continue to support extremely generous uses of the insanity defense. Even when they're surrounded by masked criminals who kill hundreds of innocents.

[AutomaticZen]

Right. Because everyone gets declared insane and no one ever gets executed. There was one apparently "in-canon" story in which the Joker was due to be executed and Batman finds out it's for the one crime he didn't commit, so he finds the evidence that exonerates the Joker. I was thinking, so wait: they *do* have the death penalty on DC Earth? And no super-criminal EVER has EVER been given the death penalty for crimes, just that one time? It isn't just the justice system on DC Earth: American voters in that world are basically not human beings as we know them on our planet. They might look like it, but they're so over-the-top liberal in one respect that they never, ever vote for or demand an expansion of the death penalty and they continue to support extremely generous uses of the insanity defense. Even when they're surrounded by masked criminals who kill hundreds of innocents.

In the DCU, you're more fucked as a regular murderer then you are if you have a theme.

I find Superman's whole strength lies in two directions.  The 'World of Cardboard' theme, wherein he's so fucking powerful it takes all his mental strength and moral certitude not to fuck everyone up

~OR~

The 'All-Star Superman' theme, wherein he's so fucking powerful that he does WEIRDSHIT on a daily day.  A living sun for a pet, doors to other universes, building shit inside the sun.  Larger than any life.

But neither can be sustained monthly.

Otherwise I prefer the Sentry.  Motherfucker is so powerful he's not only batshit insane, and he's literally his own worst enemy.  Priceless.

And to the person who mention Cyclops.  He's also batshit, which makes him great.

[gryeyes]

Sentry the walking plot device. So retardedly powerful that every confrontation you dont want to end instantly, he has to go "crazy" and fly the fuck away.

Edit: Im actually enjoying the "Kandor" story so far, hes just a normal dude with above average skills. Kryptonians in general are cunts.

[Khaldun]

In fact, a sort of interesting dimension to Superman might appear if he ends up having to pretty much get rid of the Kandorian survivors, if he becomes less the last survivor of a tragedy and more of a traitor who has to stop or destroy his own ridiculously stupid people. But then that just recurves around on the long-time similarity between the Martian Manhunter and Superman and makes Superman more like MM. (Who is surely coming back to life at the end of Blackest Night.)

Basically, Moore's Miracleman is one apex of possible story-telling: Superman changes the world into something fundamentally different. The only other obvious story-telling engine is to focus on how Superman draws the lines and keeps from taking action, which typically leads to unconvincing and emo stories in the usual hands and to something more like Dr. Manhattan in other hands, stories about a detached and alienated god struggling to hold on to his humanity.  Morrison's All-Star stories were great, but they only worked in part because they were meta-commentaries on the history of the character (and of comics in general). Maybe, just maybe, you could take something like the "12 Labors of Hercules" archetypical plot that Morrison played around with in the background there and do something more long-term with it--take Superman away from the routine punch-ups with archvillains and saving cats and so on and give him a compulsion or command to accomplish a long series of spectacularly difficult tasks.

[gryeyes]

Martian Manhunter is indeed back in play. I just read the Moore/Gaiman(couple stand alones) run on Miracleman, surprised I hadn't gotten around to it until now. Great read, like a majority of Moores work. His work seems to get ratfucked on regular basis. The whole Countdown to Final Crises/Final Crises bullshit was just ridiculous.

[NowhereMan]

I'm actually somewhat enjoying the Superman on New Krypton storyline they're running now. It's the Kandorian survivors who have created a new planet on the opposite side of the sun and Superman's run off to live with them and try to persuade them that they should play nice with the humans. It's basically a 'new cold war' plot-line with Zod seemingly secretly plotting to conquer earth (though regarded by most Kryptonians as a hero) and General Lane on earth hoping to wipe out all Kryptonians because obviously being super-powered means that they all want to destroy humanity. That particular ham-fisted part aside it's semi-interesting seeing Supermans in a position where he's basically on a level with everyone else but still sticking to his principles. At the very least it gets to show a character that is good not just because he's never really got any challenge to take the easy way out but because he's so ridiculously dedicated to his principles.

[Khaldun]

Like a lot of these kinds of stories, it's chiefly interesting for what it does to the character, not to the circumstance. So you know over the long haul that New Krypton is going back into the bottle or the Phantom Zone or whatevs, and it'll probably not be Supes' fault. But what they're trying to set up is: are you still a good guy when you're just a schlub like everyone else? That's a pretty good story.

[gryeyes]

It would probably work better if he still was not superior in every sense compared to the Kryptonians. Physically he can still kick the shit out of them, ethically he is superior, they essentially have a slave caste and are generally douches in every other aspect of their society. Maybe if he got humbled by some nobody Kryptonian who is just naturally better. Or like made an attempt to become a real Kryptonian instead of turning them into Americans. Or had to start at the bottom rungs of their society as labor caste instead of becoming lord general in a couple weeks. But newp he is STILL Superman, confident that he is superior in all aspects without even trying to adopt his own culture.

It's just another lame arc,some threat is going to appear,New Krypton will be removed from the board somehow. Superman remains the same boring douche he always is.